Friday, October 5, 2012

‘Literary creation is preeminently a
synaptic activity’, declares Vilas Sarang one of the most exciting and
neglected writers and critics of the post Independence India in his essay
‘Synaptic Narrative’.

Vilas Sarang (1942- ) is known for his disturbing
nightmarish short stories in The Women in
the Cages (2006), The Boat People
and the novels like The Dinosaur Ship,
Rudra, Tandoor Cinders (2008), and The
Dhamma Man (2011).He
has written remarkable short stories, poems, a novel and also brilliant pieces
of criticism in Marathi and English. Conventionally his sensibility is closer
to the modernist canon comprising of Kafka, Beckett and Joyce. His Marathi
short story collections are Soledad
(1975) and Atank (1999) and
translations of his stories in English are collected in the above-mentioned
collections. His Marathi collection of poems is published under the title Kavita 1969-1984 (1986) and his
collections of English poems are A Kind
of Silence (1978) and Another Life
(2010). However, he is also someone who has reflected and theorized
consistently about literature, especially fiction and translation. His
collection of criticism in English is a self-published book Seven Critical Essays. He has also
written significant criticism in Marathi Sisyphus
ani Belakka, Aksharanchya Shrama Kela(2000)
Manhole Madhla Manus(2008), ,Sarjanshodh ani Lihita Lekhak (2007),
Vangmaiyeen Sauskruti Va Samajik Vastav (2011).He has also published The Stylistics of Literary Translation (
1988 ) which is also translated in Marathi as Bhashantar ani Bhasha (2011) and edited the anthology Indian English Poetry Since 1950 (
1989). He has also edited reputed literary journals like the Bombay Review and
The Post-Post Review.

Elaborating on what the term
‘synaptic’ means, Sarang explains that the term is borrowed from physiology. It
describes ‘synapse’ as a place where nerve-cells join and an impulse is
transmitted from one cell to another. In Sarang’s narratology, ‘synapses’ is
about narrative transitions, logical connections and the devices of narrative
continuity. It is what linguists would call the ‘coherence’ or semantic or
logical unity - as against ‘cohesion’ or ‘verbal unity’ of the text. Sarang
wants to develop a theory and a method of ‘irrelevancy’ and ‘discontinuity’ in
fictional narrative, which has unexplained narrative transitions and which help
to create a deliberate effect of abruptness. Sarang adds that he does not want
to focus on this type of calculated effect but ‘downright disregard for
narrative continuity’.

Questioning E.M. Forster’s
formulation of a story as ‘the king died and the queen died’ and the plot as
‘the king died and the queen died of grief’, Sarang asks, ‘this happened…then
that happened....’ Okay, but who said it has to have logical progression?” Why
not something like, ‘the king died and the prince ran away with the court
jester?”. The point is, says Sarang, between “the king died “and the next byte
of information, there is a chink that you can take advantage of. The degree of
linkage -including its near absence- may be set according to one’s artistic
choice. Forster’s emphasis on causality and logic was fine in 1927, Sarang
points out, but today in the age of uncertainty, it tends to dampen the spirit
of “synaptic adventurousness”.

According to Sarang, because of this
powerful constraint of writing continuous, coherent fiction, the writer has no
time to go in the search of the opposite impulse, that of discontinuity which a
poet is free to explore. This has resulted prose fiction lagging behind in
terms of form, as compared to poetry. Vilas Sarang notes, “By daring to set up
narrative tensions synaptically, prose fiction can expect to generate
unexpected possibilities of meaning, and go on to ever more complexities and
richness. An adventurous exploratory spirit is built into this approach, for
one always dares falling over the precipice of meaninglessness.”

Sarang notes that while the
experimentation of discontinuous form is common in the modernist poetry, like
that of TS Eliot, discontinuous progression is not so common in fiction. He
argues that fiction, especially longer fiction, always runs the risk of
becoming predictable due to the demands of intelligibility, of unity and
continuity. These demands, Sarang notes, are largely due to commercial reasons.
Poetry, on the other hand, is not as much enslaved to market place and hence
has more freedom to experiment with discontinuity and ‘irrelevancies’. Sarang
also points out that the devices of allegory, metaphor and symbolism that are
common in poetry are actually ‘synaptic’ devices -linking and joining devices.

Sarang believes that though
surrealism and magic realism in the latter half of the twentieth century have
played a salutary role in contributing to “fiction technology” by loosening the
hold of logic and magic-less realism, these techniques have grown predictable
and formulaic in their own right. Sarang talks about the dramatic advances in
animation techniques in cinema as exemplified in the films like Antz and Shrek. These films can make anything seem ‘real’ and blur the
distinction between virtuality and reality. ‘Magic realism’ looks less
‘magical’ today, as the magic seems to be fading.

Best illustration of what Sarang
means by ‘synaptic narratives’ would be his own practice as fiction
writer. An excellent example of ‘synaptic
use’ of myth can be found in his story “The Odour of Immortality”. In this
story, Champa a Nepali sex worker in Kamathipura dreams of freedom from her
oppressive state by making quick money and returning to Nepal. The madam of her
house demands fifty thousand rupees for her freedom and so Champa starts taking
in more customers than most of other girls. Having heard of the myth of Indra
who was cursed with thousands of vaginas on his body, she fantasizes about
having ten vaginas all over her body so that she would be able to take ten
customers at a time and make money faster. She remembers the supernatural
powers of the tantric Mahant Satyendra who can actually help her fulfill her
desire for having ten vaginas. The Mahant uses his powers and Champa develops
vaginas on her body. Champa becomes a great hit in the market, and other madams
and pimps become jealous of her success. They inflict black magic on her so
that anyone who has sex with Champa immediately becomes impotent. Her business
suffers and she is crestfallen. In a synaptic leap, Sarang introduces strange
twist in the tale. One day a beggar comes to her and demands sexual favours.
Out of pity and because of his good looks, Champa allows him to have sex with
her. However, she realizes that the beggar is none other than Lord Indra in
disguise. She falls at his feet and tells him that she has been cursed that
anyone who has sex with her will become impotent. Indra says that was precisely
the reason why he wanted to copulate with her, as he had grown sick and tired
of his lust and ill repute as a fornicating god. In return, Indra blesses her
that all the vaginas on her body will turn into eyes as they did once on his
body. When her body develops thousand
eyes, the sight of her eyes dazzled people.
Champa dies of AIDS in the end and her picture is worshipped in Navratri
in Kamathipura.

Sarang’s use of myth as can be seen
in “The Odour of Immortality” is by no means a “shaping device” but a tool to
generate new mythological forms. Sarang seems to be using myths to create new
mythology of his own. The most famous example of Sarang’s use of myth as a
synaptic device is his story “Interview with Mr. Chakko”. The story is
imaginary account of an interview with a sailor named Chakko who is shipwrecked
and marooned on an unknown island of Lorzan. The mythical/synaptic aspect of
this island is that women on the island had only half bodies-either upper half
or the lower half, while men had whole bodies. The protagonist, Mr. Chakko
first marries a woman with lower half of body “who only knew how to open her
legs”. Later as he feels that he needs someone to talk to, he exchanges her for
a woman who only has upper half of human body. The story recounts bizarre
details of Chakko’s life on Lorzan. One ‘synaptic’ incident is when his fellow
mate Vaiko desires to go the island of Amuraha where men are half bodied and
women are full bodied. When Vaiko reaches Amuraha he is torn apart from waist
by hysterical hordes of women. In the
end when Chakko manages to flee the island after decades and return home, he
marries a ‘full bodied’ woman named Lakshmi
In a gruesome ‘synaptic’ twist to the tale, Chakko gets hold of an axe
and cuts Lakshmi into two pieces as he is too used to half bodied women.

The story is open to multiple
interpretations. The author, however, puts an endnote to the story recalling
Freud’s statement that there is something “in the nature of sexual instinct,
which is unfavourable to the realization of complete satisfaction.” Wendy
Doniger (1999, 215-216) looks at this piece as a satire, a tongue in cheek
allusion to the myths of splitting and doubling of women in Greek and Hindu
mythology. The axe-wielding Chakko obliquely alludes to axe wielding Parshurama
who on the orders of his father beheaded his mother only to have him revive
her. Sarang however is more interested in creating a new mythical narrative,
rather than using myth to impose order on the “immense panorama of futility and
anarchy which is contemporary history”.

When Jean Francois Lyotard in his
‘Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism’ states, ‘A work can become
modern only if it is first postmodern’, he is accentuating the import of the
avant-garde tendency of certain postmodern art, which is radically experimental
and irreverent towards the established rules of art. This irreverence towards
traditional and established norms makes the modernist work possible in the
first place. One can also consider Sarang as a true postmodern Indian writer in
English. Taking a cue from Lyotard’s theorization of the term postmodernism as
nonconformist writing i.e. the writing that does not play to the gallery of the
market, media or academia and argue that
the post -eighties postcolonial novel in Indian writing in English as
popularized by Rushdie, Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri or Vikram Seth is not really
‘postmodern’, it is possible to argue that more marginal and experimental
writers like Vilas Sarang who have courage to write against the grain of market
pressures and academic outlook can be thought more profitably as ‘ postmodern’.

It seems that poetry, rather than
fiction, was first to articulate modernist sensibility in India. When we come
to ‘Indian Fiction in English’, however, we find entirely different story. Vilas
Sarang (1989:4) points out modernity was available to the Indian English poet
readymade that and modernism came to some Indian languages much earlier. The
same can be said about postmodernism in Indian writing in English.
Interestingly there is no counterpart to modernist fiction in the west in
Indian writing in English. The great absence of the fiction inspired by Kafka,
Camus, Joyce, Faulkner, and Hemingway was filled up the fiction inspired by
Marquez, Kundera and Grass. We started imitating the postmodern movement in
fiction without imitating modernism in English. This shows that Indian Writing
in English, though it pretends to be radical is actually extremely conformist,
derivative and usually falling prey to fashions.

Unlike postmodernism in the West,
which grew out reaction against establishment of modernism, postmodernism in
Indian writing came out of desire to conform to the postmodernist movement in
the west and especially the Latin American Magic Realism boom of the sixties
and seventies. Influence of Marquez, Grass, and Kundera on Rushdie is
unmistakable. However, Rushdiean School of fiction was obsessesed with the
postcolonial themes of migrancy, allegories of nationhood and experience of
Diasporas. As I resist the tendency to
conflate modernity and colonialism, I also tend to protest the tendency to
conflate postmodernism with postcolonialism. The postcolonial novel, which came
as postmodern novel after Rushdieian revolution in the early eighties has today
become a cliché, dogma and conformity with Ghoshes and Kiran Desai’s still
playing the raag postcolonial in
their latest works. It conforms to the International market forces and caters
not only to the western audience but it also caters to the tastes of
postcolonial academicians armed with postcolonial theorization of the exile and
the migrancy finds these convenient to discuss.

The genuine postmodern spirit,
according to me, is non-conformist in Lyotardian sense. It resists the
overwhelming forces of market, academia and established modes of writing and I
find that the Great Indian Postcolonial novel is not really postmodern in its
spirit.

The writer which I would like to term
as postmodern are not the ones obsessed with postcolonial run-of-the mill
themes of allegories of nation, colonial experience, diaspora, migrancy etc but
are non-conformist and radical in their attitudes. Vilas Sarang is severely neglected because of
his radical and non-conformist mode of writing which combines grotesque imagery
and extremely unsettling themes. Yet one of the reasons for his neglect is that
he writes in a neglected form of short story.
Novel, as Sarang himself argues (2006: 283), is a ‘prisoner of the
market place’ and short story is truly a Guerrilla form. Any theorization about
postmodernism in Indian fiction will have to address the inequality among
fictional genres. The novel remains the big boss and the other modes of
fictional narration like short story or fables and this I think is because
novel is more market friendly commodity.
Sarang is avowedly anti-representational modernist in his aesthetics and
provides a refreshing alternative to over-hyped ‘diaspora' and ‘exiled'
non-resident Indian English writers like Salman Rushdie, VS Naipaul and Kiran
Desai.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

The sketch of Sarang that you have used in the post belongs to Tehelka and it accompanied Dilip Chitre's article on Sarang which can be read here- http://www.tehelka.com/story_main14.asp?filename=hub091705The_Man.asp

Total Pageviews

Profile

Sachin C. Ketkar (b. 1972) is a bilingual writer,
translator, editor, blogger and researcher based in Baroda, Gujarat. His recent
publication is a collection of Marathi critical articles on contemporary
Marathi Poetry, globalization and translation studies titled Changlya Kavitevarchi Statutory Warning:
Samkaleen Marathi Kavita, Jagatikikarn ani Bhashantar (2016). His Marathi
collections of poems are Jarasandhachya
Blogvarche Kahi Ansh (2010) and Bhintishivaicya Khidkitun Dokavtana, (2004). His poetry in English
include Skin, Spam and Other Fake
Encounters: Selected Marathi Poems in translation, (2011), and A Dirge for the Dead Dog and Other
Incantations (2003). Several of his writings on translation are published
as (Trans) Migrating Words: Refractions
on Indian Translation Studies (2010).

He has extensively translated from Marathi and
Gujarati.Most of his translations of
contemporary Marathi poetry are collected in the anthology Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry (2005) edited by
him. Along with numerous recent Gujarati writers, he has rendered the fifteenth
century Gujarati poet Narsinh Mehta into English for his doctoral research. He
has also translated the work of the well-known contemporary Gujarati writers
like Manilal Desai, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Bhupen Khakkar, Jayant Khatri, Mangal
Rathod, Jaydev Shukla, Rajesh Pandya, Rajendra Patel, Nazir Mansuri, Ajay
Sarvaiya and Mona Patrawala. He has also translated poems of Ted Hughes and
fiction by Jorge Luis Borges and Adam Thopre’s into Marathi. He won ‘Indian
Literature Poetry Translation Prize’, awarded by Indian Literature Journal,
Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi in 2000.

He holds a doctorate from VN South Gujarat
University, Surat and works as Professor in English, Faculty of Arts, The
Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara. He is also Coordinator of
the department research project under UGC SAP DRS II on “Representing the
Region: Literary Discourses, Social Movements and Cultural Forms in Western
India, 1960-2000.